Welcome to Survival of the Fittest, a RPing board loosely based off of Koshun Takami's Battle Royale, with its own unique plot and spin on the 'deadly game'. We've been around quite a while, and are now in our thirteenth year, so don't worry about us going anywhere any time soon!

If you're a newcomer and interested in joining, then please make sure you check out the rules. You may also want to read the FAQ, introduce yourself and stop by the chat to meet some of our members. If you're still not quite sure where to start, then we have a great New Member's Guide with a lot of useful information about getting going. Don't hesitate to PM a member of staff (they have purple usernames) if you have any questions about SOTF and how to get started!

Kris stirred, lying sprawled on her back across a low hummock on the fringes of the swamp. One foot, dangling off the edge of muddied chunk of ground, was submerged in a pool of water. As the morning sunlight toned its way down from blinding to something a little more tolerable, Kris blinked again and finally her eyes opened properly.

Immediately she frowned, a look of dazed confusion on her face. Outside. Since when had she ever fallen asleep outside? To boot, Kris became aware that the ground she was lying on was far from firm. As her weight shifted, it squelched underneath her. Mud? What the hell? (A passing thought came and went, to the effect that she had to look filthy) Kris had never been a 'get dead drunk and pass out' type of person, and nothing about this scenario seemed to fit-

With that multi-linguistic string of obscenities, Kris slammed a fist into the soft ground underneath her, helpless rage bubbling up to the fore. All sorts of denials, excuses and justifications rose in her mind, only for each of them to be slammed aside. This wasn't supposed to happen. She was meant to be going out on this last trip with her buddies, catch some time skating, hang out, maybe have... well, a talk with Etain.

First thought: Etain. He was her b- fri- bo-... best friend, and she sure didn't want to see him hurt. Or hear about him being hurt, or... well whatever, fact was that Etain was important to her. Kris wasn't sure in exactly what way that he was important to her, but... she wanted to see him. Was she feeling protective? Maybe, but if others out there took the instructions of the smug guy (Oh, and I forgot to introduce myself. How impolite. I am Mr. Danya.) to heart, Kris didn't want to leave anything up to chance. What, everyone wasn't going to sit around in circles singing kumbaya, were they?

Second though: Skateboard. Kris scrambled up into a kneeling position and looked around wildly, taking no notice of her waterlogged shoe. Everywhere her roving eyes fell there were only pools of stagnancy and cloying mud. Behind her rested a daypack, but Kris didn't even bother trying to look through that. The shape was all wrong. If her board was inside, it would make a distinctive impression. There was none.

It wasn't there. They'd taken it off her.

Tears pricked at the corners of Kris' eyes and she made no move to stop them as they began flowing down her cheeks. Caked with mud? Fine. Drenched shoe? Okay. Explosives strapped around her neck? ...Not fine but she could deal. No skateboard? End of the goddamn world.

"Fotze," Kris said emphatically, making no effort to stymie her tears. It was like somebody had kicked a crutch out from underneath her and she was falling. Anchorless. Kris couldn't remember being without her skateboard, at least unintentionally, since she'd first got it. Even on the bus Kris had been rolling it idly underneath one foot. A deep and aching sense of loss filled her as she knelt there crying, one that she found impossible to explain.

Kris didn't know how long she spent crying, but at length, some sense of logical thinking returned to her. She couldn't stay here forever, there were... well, she couldn't stay here. Slowly, Kris rose, looking back to her bag. She winced as she felt something cold run down her back and gingerly put a hand to the back of her head. As she'd suspected, her hair was thick with mud, turning it into a matted mess. Still, there wasn't time to worry about that.

Opening up her pack, Kris rummaged through it haphazardly, paying little attention to order. She didn't want to think that she'd need it, but not checking out what she'd been given didn't strike her as such a good idea. It didn't take much searching before Kris' hand touched something cold and metallic and she stopped dead. It had an odd shape to it and when Kris removed the object, she didn't quite understand what it was for a moment. Then something clicked as she looked at the rectangular little box of metal. It was a magazine. This had bullets in it. Kris was soon to find three more, each of which she pocketed anxiously, before her roving hand touched on something else and she froze again. She'd been expecting this, after the magazines, but she'd hoped... It was easy enough to feel what the object was. The shape underneath her fingers was pretty unambiguous. A gun, they'd given her a gun.

Okay so technically it beat some kind of sick joke, like an etch-a-sketch or something. It even beat genuinely useful equipment or melee weapons, which Kris assumed would be amongst the pool to assign to the students. But at the same time... it lost. Oh how it lost. She wasn't a sharpshooter, but who here was? It took more thought, more effort, more violence to kill somebody up close. With a gun? It was a matter of pointing and pulling the trigger. Bam. Somebody was dead.

Kris pulled the gun out and looked at it for a few seconds. A pistol, sleek and black. It even looked menacing. This was something for death and nothing more than that. Screw protection, if it came to her taking this around she was sooner or later going to use it and that meant sooner or later, she was going to kill somebody.

Her eyes stayed fixed on the gun. That was the full stop. It was too easy for this to kill somebody. Too easy to cross the line from 'self-defence' to 'murder'. She couldn't keep this, she couldn't keep it, she-

Soaring. Gun catches the light in the air. Pinwheeling in the dawn sun. One spin, two. A mighty arc, reaching its apex. Pistol falls, she watches. Clenched fists, the right thing. Drops from sight. Distant splash. She turns, begins walking. Too eas-

Kris blinked. The gun was still in her hand. She hadn't even moved an inch to cast it aside. She felt shame, unease. Faced with that certainty she'd established, Kris still couldn't muster the courage to throw it away?

Tears poured down Reika's face. She had been crying for what seemed like ages, sitting in the mud. Her legs were absolutely filthy, but she didn't care. She didn't want to be here. She just wanted to go home. She wanted to wake up to find out this was nothing more than a bad dream, wake up in her comfortable bed and maybe listen to some music. Have breakfast with her mom and dad and Reiko. This was just a bad dream and she would wake up any time. Only she knew it wasn't.

Everything from before she woke up in the swamp was still vivid in her mind. Seeing her favorite teachers gunned down in front of her had crushed her poor heart, their lifeless and blood soaked bodies a sharp reminder that this was real. It was real and Reika was weak and she was going to die. There was no two ways around it. Reika wasn't like her sister. Reiko was strong, she would survive, not like Reika. Reika would be killed by the first person she saw probably. All she could do was cry.

Reika's self pity was interrupted by loud cursing in... some other language. Looking up cautiously to the source of the sound, the tiny girl tried to wipe her eyes with her muddy arm, smearing muck and grime over her face. Cautiously she stood up, clutching her personal bag, and trying to lift the supplied day pack, which wouldn't budge. Crouching back down, she opened the pack, going through it to find the offending object. It came in the shape of a large bowling ball, which the small girl struggled to remove before zipping it back up.

Now that she was able to pick up her bag, she cautiously moved towards the sound of the voice, hoping that she would be able to talk with whoever it was. If she could maybe find someone friendly then all the best for both of them. "He-hello?" Reika called out cautiously.

Her eyes stayed fixed on the gun in her hand. For what felt like a very long while, Kris simply allowed it to lie across her palm, weighing it there, studying every inch of it. Then, almost reluctantly, she shifted it in her fingers, gripping it properly. A digit poised on the pistol's trigger, it suddenly felt immeasureably heavy.

Did Kris want this? No she didn't. She didn't. That was what she told herself. And yet even with that, she couldn't compell her fingers to open, to loosen around the gun and allow it to drop into the murky swamp waters to vanish forever. They remained locked in place like a drowning man clutching at a life raft. Sighing, Kris looked away from the gun, as if avoiding acknowledging it would take away the problem.

Problem: She had a good reason, hell a great reason why carrying the pistol was a bad idea. And something inside of Kris was steadfastly refusing to bow to that. It was like her hand belonged to somebody else.

Kris was still agonising over that when she heard the voice.

She never meant it.

She would say that then, she would say that in a thousand years. Kris never meant to react in the way that she did. It was just how on edge she was, how jumpy, the fact that she'd never expected somebody to have approached behind her . Anybody, in the same situation, would have done much the same thing. Not deliberately, accidentally. Because she didn't mean what she did.

Whether intentional or not, Kris reacted.

Reika's voice startled the skater out of her thoughts. If she'd been thinking rationally, rather than struggling with her gun dliemma and still aching over the loss of the skateboard, Kris would never have been so panicked by such a tentative voice. Regardless, Kris whirled right around in a blur of motion. As she whipped into the turn, the hand with the gun was briefly pointed directly towards Reika and at that instant, Kris instinctively pulled the trigger.

Two emotions went through Reika's mind in very rapid succession. The first was relief. Relief that she had found someone else, someone maybe she could talk to. Someone who she could be safe with. The second emotion that came shortly after was panic, as that same person whirled around, gun in hand. The small girl's mind quickly tried to find something to say, anything. Everyone was just on edge, right? The other person wouldn't pull the trigger. Reika was harmless, she couldn't even hurt a fly. Then she heard a bang.

Something slugged her hard in the chest, sending her sprawling to the ground. The bullet had hit her heart, or rather where it would have been in a normal human being. She had a rare condition, mostly seen in mirror image twins like Reika, where her heart was on the opposite side of her body. So instead of hitting her heart, the bullet instead punctured the girl's lung. Blood gurgled from the wound as the air escaped from the hole in her lung, her vision rapidly fading around the edges. She let out a sputtered cough as her remaining working lung tried desperately to take in oxygen, but at that point it was too late. As the darkness claimed what was left of her vision, Reika got a look at Kris's face. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew. It was an accident. She hadn't meant to pull the trigger. Her vision vanished completely. The last thing Reika Ishida heard in her mind was the last strained notes of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, her favorite piece of music.

Reika fell with the barest of sounds, shot through the chest. Time stood still. Kris remained frozen in place, half way through her turn, the SIG-Sauer extended before her, pointed in the vague direction of the girl she'd just shot. She could see Reika's form lying slumped on the marshy ground, her head partially submerged in the swampwater. Motionless. Kris stood and stared and didn't move a muscle because she knew, she knew she'd been proven right in the worst possible way.

A sound. She's startled, a blur of motion. In slight panic. The pressure on the finger, comforting. A little squeeze, a bang. A sigh. Fall to the ground. No threat. Nor was there ever.

Kris trembled slightly, her face a pale, stunned mask. She hadn't meant it... but she'd still pulled the trigger. If it was just throughh being startled, it would have been set off immediately, but no. The gun was aimed. The firing was instinctive. But it had intent. Not fluke or chance, but a target. A deliberate target.

But she hadn't meant it.

Too easy.

Like a rigid marionette with its strings abruptly cut, Kris simply collapsed, falling onto her hands and knees in the mud. She wanted to cry, but no tears were forthcoming. This wasn't upset, this wasn't the earlier loss, this was just... empty. She'd seen it coming. She'd seen this coming and in the fastest possible time it had gone from an imagaining to a worst case scenario.

Kris suddenly burst into motion, scrambling towards Reika's co... bo... Reika. She was quite still, and if Kris hadn't known for a certainty already, she would have knwn then that Reika was dead. Gently, Kris took hold of Reika's head and neck, shifting the body slightly so that it was least on drier ground instead of half into the bog like some kind of dead animal. Kris sat up slightly and regarded her... victim. She looked fairly peaceful and at the least, didn't look like she'd died in pain.

Kris smiled then. A wild, slightly crazed smile that didn't have a single trace of humour.

"Oh, so that's alright, Kris. You're a murderer, but at least the person you killed died easy," Kris let out a laugh that was half hysterical, half manic. "Murderer. Murrrrderr," Kris rolled the word around on her tongue. "Mörder. Mördare." She started laughing again and her breath caught, turning into full-fledged sobs, somehow still trying to giggle through it all. The gun was clenched tightly in her hand as Kris kneeled over Reika's body, head hanging low, body wracked with the guilt and shame."Killer. Hey folks at home, that's a label you never thought you'd stick on little Kristina, is it? Skate pro? No. Artist? No. Murrrrderrrerr. Oh yes. One hundred percent," she looked up with hollow eyes. "One hundred, fucking, percent."

If it weren't for the intervention, Jackie probably wouldn't have woken up for hours. However, the sound of a gunshot not twenty feet away from her made her shoot upright. She had the worst dream. She had been put on that God Awful show, Survival of the Fittest. The so called Terrorists were making a stand against America. But that made no sense, their list of demands was beyond convoluted. It had to be a show, a viral marketing golden child.

And for a moment, she was convinced that the Gunshot had just been a part of the dream, until she finally registered mud under her bare hands; the smell of decay in the air. Her purse was next to her, a small, sensible bag containing a few personal effects. Nothing that would be really useful, not that she'd even thought about that.

Her head darted around in a panic. She was in some kind of swamp. The air reeked of decay and... Swampyness. There was a tinge of red on the ground not far from her mud covered body... A loud, high pitched "Eep!" shot out of her mouth involuntarily as she mentally scolded herself. Dipshit! There's a shooter around, do you wanna fucking kill yourself?

No. Survival is the only Logical option. Someone had done the smart thing and shot someone else. They had to kill to go home. Nothing made anyone here more 'worthy' of life than anyone else, it was literally 'Survival of the Fittest'. Even if the game and it's reasons were the least logical thing ever, the players didn't have to be. She didn't intend to be a statistic. And if she was smart, she would go home.

She scooped up her purse quickly, and glanced around, her mind racing a thousand miles a second. There was an ugly green day-pack sitting nearby; and while she had no idea if it was hers or the dead kid's, it would be useful. So she launched herself across the slippery mud, looping a strap in her hand as she attempted to flee. However her shoes slid in the mud and she landed face first. "Shit!" Her arms flailed as she scrambled to right her self and run.

(7:07:51 PM) Little: "TAKE THAT MOM. YOU TRIED TO PROTECT ME, BUT I'VE BEEN TEN COCKS DEEP 24/SEV-UNNNNNN" Rattlesnake: ...He says confidently after burning his roll null. I think Ciel just punched the RNG in the face.Namira: Ciel: Punch RNG in the snout to establish superiority.KamiKaze: I think Kyle enjoys the scent of poor people.

Kris' free hand stole across her body and, seemingly of its own volition, clamped down on the opposite wrist. The sobs had stopped now, though they'd been more hysterical than sorrowful, as had the laughter, which couldn't have been further from gaiety. Instead, she just trembled, the fist in which she clenched her gun most of all. Kris knew that she should move, distance herself from what she'd done in case anybody ran across the situation, but she found herself paralysed once more.

It would be like running away, denying that it had happened. Fleeing from that thought she'd had when she'd first seen the gun and the fact that it had been right all along. It was always going to happen, sooner or later, and it had wound up being sooner. Not self-defence, not accidental, just straight up cold-blooded murder. What threat had Reika posed, with her quavering voice and lack of any discernable weapon?

About as much as the gnats buzzing through the air around her.

Somebody swore. Kris' head turned in the direction of the noise and she looked into the distance, trying to make out who it might have been. The hand holding the pistol wanted to point it in that direction as a form of warding, whilst the other held it down with all her strength. Not twice. No. Kris hadn't meant to pull the trigger, but something inside of her had. She wasn't going to let it happen again.

Away in the direction of the voice's source, Kris saw a figure flailing about in the mud. They must've fallen over. The footing was certainly treacherous here, and Kris supposed that it would be easy enough to slip. The space between her (And Reika) and whoever the other person was didn't seem too considerable, but she didn't bother calling out. Instead, Kris just turned her eyes back to Reika.

What was there to say? She was knelt besides a dead body with a gunshot wound, holding the very weapon that had done the deed. There were no greetings, no 'ice breakers' that could be drawn forward to strike up a conversation. They'd have been odd in the first instance, in such a awful situation, but...

Jackie was almost concerned by the lack of a response from the shooter. Was she hiding in wait with some sort of sniper rifle? Or was she just afraid?

That didn't matter. Jackie needed to move. And move she did. It took her what felt like forever to pull herself out of the muck. She was sticky, she was disgusting, and if she left the swamp, she would give herself away at a mile's distance just from the odor emanating from her person. The mud was probably comprised of more living material than actual mud in a place like this.

She'd have time to feel nasty later. The issue was, the shooter was still around. Finally in reality in less than a minute's time, Miss Broughten's feet were 'firmly' planted in the muck, her hands wrapped around her bags. While there was still that survival instinct whispering almost inaudibly in her ear to escape as fast as her legs would carry her, she knew that doing so would only result in another slip, another face full of dank, disgusting earth. How could I have been so careless?

The 'run'; if you could call it that; that Jackie did away from the scene of the murder would have been hilarious to anyone watching. A combination of a waddle and a slide that you would expect to see at children's night at the roller rink. However, disregarding the comedic value of her strategy, it was a success. She managed to avoid falling a second time. And that was all she needed.

A quick glance back over her shoulder was all she needed. Even in the dense, dank area, there was still a glint off of the sleek black death machine held neatly in the palm of a girl who looked lost in thought.

Maybe she's in shock... I can get away.

Deciding to take the route of not being detected by smell by the other two hundred and some odd Bayview Seniors, she navigated her way through the swamp, deciding to take up residence somewhere in the area for a spell. Not close enough to be in danger from the owner of that Pistol, but not far enough that her 'impromptu camouflage' gave her away. A route of ducking behind trees would work. Ensuring that she was out of line of sight, she began to run. And then she ducked to the left. And then ran. And then ducked to the left again. And then ran. And then ducked back to the right. And then ran.

The cold logic queen of Bayview, the whole while tried to convince herself that she was acting rationally of her own willpower. She convinced herself she was above letting her emotion rule her, and this flight was not of fear. The adrenaline continued to surge however, her body betraying her own mind.

(7:07:51 PM) Little: "TAKE THAT MOM. YOU TRIED TO PROTECT ME, BUT I'VE BEEN TEN COCKS DEEP 24/SEV-UNNNNNN" Rattlesnake: ...He says confidently after burning his roll null. I think Ciel just punched the RNG in the face.Namira: Ciel: Punch RNG in the snout to establish superiority.KamiKaze: I think Kyle enjoys the scent of poor people.

Milo Taylor had a headache. He remembered blood, death, and a bunch of people getting gassed on the bus but anything beyond that was foggy.

He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked to his right. He saw a daypack with his name and "B048" written on it, and the fog cleared. Milo vocalized something resembling an extremely girly scream and jumped up, holding his hands up to his chin with elbows bent. Any onlooker would have considered this an extremely awkward position.

His fearful expression changed to one of childish joy as he recovered from the shock, bent down, and unzipped the daypack. Inside he found a pack of rations (Not enough, the boy thought- clearly he overestimated his ability to survive), a flashlight, a map, a compass, his travel bag, and most awesomely of all, a net gun with a couple of extra nets.

Milo let the net gun stay in the daypack. He was alone, to his knowledge, and even beyond that he was at what looked like a disgusting swamp; not a likely location to attract many people. He may be in Survival of the Fittest, but the invincible Milo Taylor would rather die than think he was going to die at any point in the near (or far) future. Instead, he decided to root through his travel bag.

Money, money, money, Faygo, money, shirt, pants, shades, money... ooh, iPod, money, money, money, money... oh hell yes. Milo had found one of his prized possessions in the travel bag, and one he had figured would be taken, at that. His battery-operated iPod speakers were laying there, in their carrying case, ready for him to start blasting horrible music at everyone in the general area.

But first, he had something to say to the cameras. He looked around for a second and saw none, but he figured there weren't any blind spots so he began spouting off his monologue.

"If it's money that you wish for, I have a few thousand American dollars in my travel bag! I know I'm impossible to kill because I can stop bullets in mid-air with the sheer force of my manly spirit, but it would still be fairly nice to be away from this God-forsaken island! I mean, after all, I didn't bring enough clothes for the whole Ess-Oh-Tee-Eff game program thing," Milo said loudly. As much as it was a blatant lie to anyone else in earshot, Milo, being somewhat mentally ill, legitimately believed that he could stop bullets.

The obnoxious, well-dressed idiot looked down and noticed a small wet spot in the crotch of his pants. "I think I also spilled something on myself on the bus. After all, someone as amazingly glorious and radiant as me would never wet himself! No, sir! Especially since I piss molten fucking gold and it would burn a hole right through my expensive trousers!" Milo had a habit of hamming it up for people watching. He was egotistical, narcissistic, and annoying, and God as his witness, he was not afraid to express it.

He then noticed that no one was watching, picked his stuff up, and went away to somewhere where people would actually notice his "greatness."

One day, the fabled Ragnarok will come, and as the gods descend to earth and wage war while the world dies around them, WickedIcon will lead the charge, a 12-gauge shotgun in his right hand, and a bottle of Jack Daniels in his left as he rides a steed made of fire and pain.

And the masses will look upon him and weep at the beauty of it all.

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[19:25] Hallucinogenic: it's not like i wanna put my anus on parade

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04:26MimiOH04:26MimiTHAT'S LESS BAD04:27MimiI THOUGHT SHE HAD TO JERK OFF MONKEYS

God, his head was pounding. Etain Brennan couldn't remember the last time he had this bad a headache. Of course, that seemed par for the course, all things considered. It wasn't every day you woke up on Survival of the Fittest. It didn't help waking up in the middle of the damn swamp either.

When he did come to, he'd naturally spent some time trying to figure out what was happening. He remembered trying to find a seat on the bus next to Kris, listening to his iPod, then...nothing. No terrorists rushing the bus and taking the driver hostage, nothing that any summer action movie would have suggested about a kidnapping. Just blank. Then he'd he woken up in a giant freakin' auditorium, tied up with the rest of the seniors. He hadn't been one of the screamers, but he would admit that he panicked. After all, wasn't that the natural reaction? He'd been kidnapped terrorists and the only likely outcome was death. The 'Mr.Danya' had made his introduction and broke the news. After that, things sort of went blank again. Not that he'd passed out, but he'd been in too much of a blind panic to pick up much on what he said.

Then...swamp. Not his choice of place to wake up in. Of course, his choice didn't seem to matter. Like he realized before, he was going to die, and the only difference was who he would take with him or who he'd save. Right, that last part. There was no doubt that he wasn't the first, but he'd made up his mind soon after he recovered his wits he wouldn't play that psycho's game. No worries, though. He was sure that plenty of people would. The best he could hope for was that his death wasn't too embarrassing. He also realized that when that was the best case scenario, things weren't likely to improve anytime soon.

When he did wake up, he'd rightly enough felt a burst of anger. What gave those bastards the right to do this? How could anyone let this happen? He deserved better then this, didn't he? Sure, he didn't have any great plans for his life and he doubted he'd go on to cure cancer or something equally important, but this just wasn't fair! Didn't he have every right to a long, if ordinary life? Why did he need to die for some sicko's entertainment? And those people watching at home who thought this was all pretend! He'd wanted to scream and curse the heavens.

His thoughts and emotions went to fear and despair next. After all, he was inevitably going to die here, probably alone. He couldn't lie and deceive his way across the island, murdering everyone who was fool enough to trust him! What kind of monster would do this to him? To his friends? Maybe he should just curl up and wait for some enterprising player to come along and put him down. After all, he wasn't brave or strong. What abilities did he have to survive this whole mess? What, could he skateboard his classmates to death? The whole thing was just so damn futile. He found himself pacing back and forth the small depression in which he'd woken up.

It was only after hearing a gun shot in the distance did he collect himself to any degree. It was only then did he start to think. What about his friends? Were they alright? What about Kris? He need to find them, maybe figure something out. The smaller bag, with his name stenciled on the side, the one they had given him. He knelt beside it, emptying it out and taking inventory. First aid, map, food...C4? Who the hell was he, Rambo? What was he going to do with C4? Especially if he only knew it was C4 from the small booklet also taken out of the bag. After a moment's deliberation, he stuffed everything else back in the bag. He considered leaving the explosives before putting it back in the bag. There was nothing he could do to shake the feeling that if he left it, someone would blow him up with it. Things just worked out that way. Seeing as how he only had extra clothes in the other bag, he elected to leave that behind, if only to save some weight.

Now that he was moving, he tried to go the opposite direction of the gunshot, but to be honest, he couldn't remember which direction it came from. The damned swamp seemed to mess with his sense of direction. So, he made his way through the swamp, moving carefully over the precarious footing. Unfortunately, his Vans were completely soaked through and would become a terrible annoyance if he ever made it out of the swamp. The Irish boy was trying to move forward and see what he'd just stepped in when he almost tripped over a bag, half submerged in the murk. Connecting the dots, he froze. A bag meant someone was nearby, possibly someone ready to kill him. His eyes scanned the immediate area until they froze over the figure hunched over a few feet away. He almost turned and ran, but something made him pause. He turned the bag over with his foot until he saw the name, then he looked up quickly. "Kris?" He called out, hesitantly. "Tha' wouldn' 'appen ta be ye, would it?"

As the scene replayed over and over in Kris' head, the voice of Milo, belligerently loud as it was, seemed to be coming from the other end of a long tunnel, a thousand miles away. It barely registered, vaguely reaching her ears before passing straight through her head without her even processing what the voice was saying. It was just background noise to her, hash, static.

Kris couldn't handle this. She wasn't handling this. She was barely trying. It felt like at any moment that-

Etain was there. He'd found her. Relief flowed through Kris. He was okay, she didn't have to worry about hearing on the announcements th-. She froze up. Even the trembling stopped. Because whilst her best friend might have been there, so was the corpse of Reika, right there in front of her. He'd see Reika and it'd be over, he'd be horrified, disgusted, even. It was already too late, there was no way that Kris could talk her way out of this or somehow conceal the body. Etain would know.

She couldn't let herself see the look on his face when he realised. She couldn't. Kris stepped over the line from 'victim' to 'killer' the second she'd opted to keep the pistol. She didn't think she could bear to see the truth of that fact etched onto Etain's face.

Don't look. Better not to look. ...Sorry Etain.

Kris got to her feet, wavered for a moment and almost turned, but then firmed her resolve. She bowed her head, then jumped Reika's body and booked it, sprinting as fast as she could to get away from Etain. As Kris fled, she saw Reika's daypack lying abandoned on the ground alongside her and snagged it by the strap, swinging it onto her shoulder. No way was she going back for her own.

Me? Why, what a wild and crazy accusation! No no, it was that OTHER girl.

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Wait, why was she running? Did she think he was going to hurt her? Maybe a case of mistaken identity? Right, because his accent sounded like every other Irish boy in the school's. Etain took a step forward, calling out his best friend's name. "Kris, wait!"

Why the hell had she run? Naturally, he started after her. There must be some reason that she'd taken off, some perfectly reasonable explanation. And, of course, he would trip over that reason immediately. One second he was following Kris into (out of?) the swamp, the next he was splashing face first into the swamp. He tried not to think of everything in the water as he surfaced, sputtering and spitting. He glanced over his shoulder at what tripped him, expecting a tree branch or something just as innocuous. Just a body, nothing new. Etain looked back after Kris before doing a double-take. Okay, that was new. And unsettling. Kris couldn't have done that...could she?

Etain climbed to his feet, ignoring his soaked jeans and t-shirt while he inspected the body. The body, not former classmate, or innocent victim. The body. No, no, this wasn't right. He was missing something. Kris wouldn't kill someone, probably even if they were gunning for her. Jesus, Kris wouldn't hurt a fly. Yet present evidence would suggest otherwise. Well, he had to missing something. Maybe she tried to sneak up on Kris with malicious designs of her own. Self-defense, right? Maybe Kris just found the body, and was startled when he called out? Or maybe she shot her. But that didn't make any sense! Kris wouldn't hurt anyone, even a stranger, even if she was told it was life or death. But, again, evidence said contrary.

No. No, no way could he accept that. There was something he didn't know. It must have been an, an accident. Maybe the gun went of on it's own, the simple result of some inexperienced with guns. Yeah, Kris didn't have the safety on, an accidental discharge. Etain laughed nervously to himself as he stood, forcing his eyes away from the body. It would all be a simple mistake. He would find Kris and she would tell him as much.

But what if it wasn't an accident? Maybe Kris was going to Play the Game? Alright, discarding the things he knew about Kris that made that theory sound idiotic, why didn't she shoot him? If Kris was going to play the game, why not shoot him when he called out to her? He was, for all intents and purposes, unarmed. He would have been an easy, almost disappointing kill. But, instead of shooting him, she ran. It could have been that she didn't want to kill her friend, or, and more likely in his opinion, he'd startled her when she was still rattled about, well, you know.

As...the girl he loved? The girl he cared very deeply about? The girl who is his best friend? As any one of those, he had to follow her. Even if she was Playing the Game, even if she did end up killing him, at least it would be someone he cared about, right? Better to be killed by her then some classmate-turned-psycho. Maybe not the best way of looking at it, but it wouldn't change a thing. Etain did pause to grab her bag. Even if he didn't find her, the extra supplies could come in handy. He threw that over his opposite shoulder and took off after her, as fast the footing in the damned swamp would allow.